


Absolution

by Draikinator



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Medical stuff, Post-Series, trauma mentions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 01:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2904617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/pseuds/Draikinator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waspinator pulls himself back together, ready to engage those plans he has. Meanwhile, Bee is dealing with his team moving on back on Cybertron to new things and places without him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wrongness

The grass is long beneath his claws, something yellow-green and sharp. It brushes against his armour/skin in a way that never would have bothered him before, in a way he never would have  _registered_  before, but a way that was grating against his mind, now, a dull stinging followed by a soreness that refused to ebb and pressed against the back of his mind, a constant reminder that something in him was Wrong.

He tugs his left leg out of the grass where it is resting. It's easy to see it, even in the dark- his eyes are almost  _better_  now, somehow. Eyes. Optics. Eyes?

Waspinator pulls at the wires of his thigh, stripping the rubber coating and twisting the copper filaments together. He pulls the torn wires of the leg closer, entwining the fibers. Waspinator moves on to the next dislocated wire. The tubing after that is more difficult to repair- his stingers are so much smaller now, and he isn't used to calibrating and controlling them like his old ones. He tries to keep the setting as low as possible, but without a HUD he isn't sure how well he's managing. Electricity carves out burns and new pains inside his thighs as he presses the tip of one claw to the rubber tubing of the main energon line in his leg and melts the two ends together.

It was a messy job and certainly shouldn't have been permanent- he's leaning on centuries old training, corrupted data files from the early days of bootcamp and field repairs. Everything hurts in entirely new ways though, now, and there are parts inside him that don't make sense, that he doesn't even recognize. Waspinator flexxes the claws on the end of his stabilizing servo- foot? -and notes the 0.0067 second delay in execution. This is a problem. A problem he is not able to fix.

He cauterizes the armour/skin back together, thick welted scars blooming across the surface beneath his touch.

One leg down. He still has another leg, and his vestigal arms and a thorax to attach- not to mention his crumpled wings, but he's looking better. At least he has both his arms, now.

He drags himself to his other leg, scrabbling at the ground, pulling himself through the dirt and the long yellow-green grass that is sharp against his armour/skin. Spider-bot is speaking, but he has his audials turned down. Waspinator had thought she was speaking, earlier, about fixing him, that they could still ally themselves together to fix themselves, but there was no way she was  _still_  on the same thought process and Waspinator does not need fixing. She might have been talking to herself. She might have been threatening him, for all Waspinator knows. He had no intention of dialing his audials back up to find out.

Or at least, he hadn't, until she is shaking him, screaming, and finally she is worth the effort. His servos/hands still themselves inches from his other leg and it takes him three tries to find the new command prompt to restore his hearing. It's different now, everything, different now.

" _-op screaming, you idiot, stop it, stop it, STOP IT-_ "

He's immediately bowled over by the volume. She's yelling, but so is someone else. It couldn't be her, her mouth was already occupied with words, and he could not identify who was screaming, incomprehensibly, without words, with nothing but agony.

" _Waspinator stop fragging screaming, I can't hear myself think, shut up, shut up, shut up SHUT UP SHUT U-_ "

Was she telling the truth? Was he screaming?

Waspinator's mouth feels strange. It's difficult to tell when sounds are coming out of it, because the sounds he's making resonate in his throat and not his voicebox now. It is strange. It as Wrong. He wishes it would stop but command prompts fail him and his HUD is missing and the noises are only growing louder and he drags himself upward, stabilizing servo/foot scrabbling at the ground and claws/servos/hands scrabbling at her, screaming, screaming  _screaming SCREAMING_  until the world is screaming with him, all bright energy and shrieking air that cycles in and out of his chest, beyond ventilating,  _breathing_ \- electicity burning through him  _again_  just like before until  _suddenly-_

Silence.

He is not screaming. The world is not screaming. She is not screaming.

Waspinator is not sure where he was, but the yellow-green grass that was sharp against his armour/skin is gone. It is moist now, moist earth and the smell of salt and rotting fish. He knows little of this planet, and isn't even sure if he is still  _on_  this planet. The soft earth below him gives way beneath his claws and he presses forward.

His leg has moved. It is jutting out of the mud now, another ten feet away. Everything has moved. He was wrong; the sharp yellow/green grass  _was_  still here, it had only been moved. Piles of it, dragging dry earth were rising out of the mud. Bits of wood and roots, too.

Spider-bot is in one of the trees, tangled in its limbs and the hanging leaves that wept from its branches. Waspinator turns away from her and back to his limb.

No one wanted him, Wasp  _or_  Waspinator. Not the Autobots, not Bumble-bot, not Spider-bot, not even the sharp yellow/green grass. The very Earth itself had cast him away, moved him, let some other place take him. Always someone else's problem.

Even now, twisting the wires of his other leg together with his thigh and feeling the dull tingling sensory net within the warped and broken limb begin to twinkle back into existence he can feel it deep within his chassis, this new place, filled with mud and rot and weeping branches begin to reject him. It's building, hot and cold and electric and tingling, bit by bit.

He cauterizes the tubing of his leg. He cauterizes the armour/skin above it. He traces the scars, ugly, bubbling, a mix of burning metal and carapace. He digs one of his wings from the mud.

He lets the slowly bubbling, building rejection grow inside him and lets it him take him to the next place that could stand his existence for a few moments, before that place rejects him and his Wrongness, too.


	2. Prepared

Bumblebee swiped one servo against the datapad. On screen, his monster attacked the enemy's with an electric attack (his favourite, but he knew he was biased) and sent it packing to the graveyard. His opponent's next choice was a bit tougher- a rock type, so electric attacks were kind of pointless. He wasn't packing much in the way of water (because water types are lame, duh) but he had one grass-type on his team, a tree-like creature that used its leaves as throwing stars. He'd named it Prowl, and while it was certainly a good fit to use against his opponent, he was hesitant to throw it out- he'd never used it in a battle and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

He was still deliberating on what to do when a blue servo pulled the datapad out of his hands, and he looked up at Optimus sheepishly.

"Bumblebee... what did I tell you about video games?"

Bumblebee rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "Sorry, bossbot! But what can you exect from me, filing data all day? I'm not a paper pusher, I'm an action hero! I should be out there, ya'know, crushin' Cons and takin' names. I'm a waste at a desk like a  _secretary!_ "

"Now, Bumblebee," Optimus sighed, "You've certainly proved yourself... more than capable, on the battlefield. But you still have to prove you can handle playing by the  _rules_  before you can actually join the Elite Guard. We talked about this, didn't we?"

Bumblebee snorted, "Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, but, come on! I think I've had plenty of training. A li'l bit out off the books, sure, but I think I'm ready to go!"

Optimus sighed and placed the datapad on the desk, "Bumblebee, we've had this conversation. Just... keep filing all the datapads, and take orders  _politely_ , and you  _will_  get into the Elite Guard. You're still young, you know, you're not exactly on a time limit, here."

Bumblebee harumphed a noise and leaned back in his chair, "Well... yeah... whatever, I mean, I know."

"So you'll get those reports I sent you filed today?"

"Yeahhhhh..."

* * *

 

"Bumblebee!"

He looked up at her, startled,and nearly tripped himself out of his seat, "Eh?"

Sari frowned- or at least, he thought she frowned, it was hard to tell with the way her face was covered in her robot mode, but the light EM field she had started emitting recently seemed unhappy, "Bumblebee, you aren't paying attention to me."

Bumblebee shrugged and sipped at his energon cube, leaning on the cafe table, "What? Nah, I'm totally listening to you, Sari. You were talking about, uh..."

"I was asking you if you wanted to come back to Earth with me next week to visit my dad!"

"Right! Yeah! I totally heard that, I was just, uh, I was just thinking, you know? I'd totally love to! I've got the vacay-time saved up and everything."

She glared at him for amoment before sighing, "Fine. Listen, I've got plans with Jazz here in a bit, you should get back to your office and put in your vacation request. Make it for friday to sunday, alright?" She stood up and activated her jets, lowering herself from the native-Cybertronian-sized chair to thr floor and Bumblebee swallowed the rest of his cube before he stood up, too.

"Sure, no problem, I got places to be, too, anyway. See you later, Sari."

* * *

 

Bumblebee leaned over the berthtable casually, plucking one of the crystals from the display and twirling it in his servos gently.

"So, Blurr, ol' buddy, how goes it today?"

Blurr shrugged absently, optics watching the light moving on the walls as it bounced off the crystal, "Cliffjumper came by earlier and dropped those off for me. He had said they were a 'get well soon' gift since I'm in the hospital in recovery as you may have noticed."

Bumblebee kicked up his stabilizing servos on the side of the berth, "So, ol' Cliffy dropped by then, eh? That all he say? "Get well soon, here's some Petrohexian crystals, later?""

"It was more along the lines of "hello Blurr I think I may or may not have aided and abbetted in your attempted murder and I actually feel quite bad about that and I'm hear looking for absolution in my not having found the order to dump your mangled body in the incinerator strange so won't you please forgive me for my carelessness?""

Bumblebee shifted uncomfortably.

"Oh. Uh, I see. Sorry about that."

"Last I checked, you were not the one I spent cycles trusting only to have me crushed like so much waste, nor were you the one who dropped me down the trash chute like refuse so I'm not certain what it is you think you're apologizing for."

"I, uh, I meant it more, uh… Consolingly," he mumbled flatly, twirling the crystal absently. Blurr eyed the reflections for a moment before shifting on the berth with a wince and a grunt.

"Bumblebee, might you do me a teensy tiny favour and bring by some of those earth holovids you spend so much time viewing later? There's nothing much to do here but melt and the holovids they're letting me watch are as dry as my tanks tight now."

Bumblebee put the stone back on the nightstand, "Sure, if you want. All I have are cartoons, though."

"That's fine. I've always found it to be a pleasant art form though I have historically always been much too busy undercover to have any experience with them."

Bumblebee nodded brightly and stood up to leave.

* * *

 

Bumblebee spun in his chair, quick circles he maintained with one leg draped down to the floor, kicking idly whenever he started to slow down.

"Bumblebee, would you  _cut that out_?!" Bulkhead snapped, turning away from the open spacebridge panelling to yell. Bumblebee winced and pressed his heel into the chrome floor, halting the motion.

"Wha? Geez, sorry, you don't gotta yell..." He grumbled, leaning against the back of the chair, "How much longer, anyway? You said you only had the one last thing to finish."

"I  _also_  toldja that it could be a few more  _hours._  You're the one who said  _no big deal_."

"Yeah, but that's only cuz I figured you were exagerating!" Bee swung his chair again and Bulkhead groaned, throwing down his wrench.

"Bumblebee-" He stopped, optics narrowing, "Wait. What is that...?"

Bee stopped spinning and cocked his helm to the side, curious, "Huh? What's what?"

Bulkhead tapped the monitor with a single servo, "It looks like... like a tiny li'l transwarp signal."

"A transwarp signal? What, on Earth? No way, Bulk."

"No- look! There it goes, it just vanished. Wait- it's back. In... Russia?" Bee stood up, trotting over on heavy stabilizing servos.

"Mm?" He said, looking at the screen. It was there- a tiny green dot on an otherwise empty projection. He frowned, "What  _is_  that? That's not big enough to be a spacebridge. Is it a ship?"

Bulkhead shook his head, "No, it's not big enough for that either."

"What could be smaller than a ship and still transwarp?"

Bulkhead made a face, "A bot?"

Bumblebee made a worse face, "Wha? No way."

The light vanished, and reappeared in in northern Brazil.

"Wha?! Did it just transwarp  _again_!?" Bee cried, stepping back.

"Hmm... you know, I bet, if I can just, rerout the signal... I can link it through the spacebridge here and we can find out  _precisely_  what this thing is!" Bulkhead said, tapping at the controls.

Bee glanced at the spacebridge, then down at his own servos, sliding out his stingers. Bulkhead paused and looked back at him.

"D'ya think we'll need those...?" He asked, hesitantly, servos hovering over the keypad.

"Huh? Nah, prolly not, but it's better to be safe than sorry, ain't it?" Bee shot back, dropping his arms to his sides, falsely casual. Bulkheads servos returned to typing, before he picked up his tools and replaced the siding on the bridge.

"Alright, I'm going to air the signal," Bulkhead said, pulling up a command prompt on the screen, and Bee shifted his weight between his legs, "And the next time it transwarps, it'll pick it up, and- oh!" The spacebridge roared to life suddenly, bright and swirling and brilliant in the setting sunday sun.

Bee aimed his arms upward, ever-prepared.


	3. Finally

The world had been cold, but all the white/wet went away, and now Waspinator is just wet. His wings are crumpled, but useful in beating against the water trying to drag him down. He wouldn't have been so afraid, but his body is terrified, now- every time too much water got into it, it burned, it  _hurt_ , and he found himself clawing at the bank with his reattached claws, desperately trying to pull himself onto the shore, wet and warm and burning and terrified.

He hates this new body. He hates it so much. It  _hurts_  and he cannot find the command prompt to disable his pain receptors. Everything  _burns_  and no matter how much he fixes, he is still crawling, beating his crumpled wings against the ground. His autorepair is either not functional or so slow as to be virtually not functional.

He hauls himself onto the marshy shore, gasping for air he only just realized he so desperately needed, lungs burning, limbs burning, damaged lines and broken wings and torn tubing all burning and begging him to  _rest_.

He collapses onto his back, ignoring the discomfort in his wings; crushed beneath him. How inconvenient.

His chest/chassis heaves, nearly too tired to exert the effort to do so but far too starved for air not to, and he whines, high and loud and tired. The moist earth is trapped in the seams of his body, in between the weld lines of his arms and legs, and in the bent and burst plating along his midsection, gumming up the workings in his neck- the water is still pouring out of the crevices between armour gaps and he can feel the cold sting of air under his platelets, sharp and disorienting.

Everything  _hurts_.

Something in him is burning, harder, again. He knows what it means. He is leaving. Probably somewhere worse- he hadn't thought anything cold be worse than the white/wet but then came the drowning and now, even unable to imagine anything worse, he knows it is going to be worse.

Waspinator is not lucky.

It whirrs inside him, growing, hotter, faster, and he gasps for more air, struggling to his feet/pedes shakily. He needs to be ready- this time is different. The tug from inside him is being tugged by something else- something new, something far away.

He bursts, like a watermelon on concrete on a hot summer day- and the water was gone, the marshy soil beneath, gone.

Suddenly he's tumbling, out of the air, flailing, beating his useless wings with a desperation he hadn't realized he still had left in him, but he hits the pavement on his side anyway, and feels one of his vestigial arms snap off again, and a sickening crunch as the functional left arm bends the wrong way- just  _more_  repairs to make. More  _screaming_.

Waspinator gasps for air, unbroken arm shaking beneath him as it tries to push his weight back up, knees scraping paint/flesh as they smeared yellow/pink against the surface. His vision swims, bleary, moist, repetitive, ghosting and he blinks up at sudden motion.

Small Yellow and Big Green- moving quickly, too close. Waspinator stumbles, shoving his feet/pedes beneath him.

"Don't touch Waspinator!" Waspinator yells, moving backward defensively, trying to force activate his stingers- but they are wet, and muddy and the seams are poorly welded and instead they scream a metallic shriek and refuse, so he merely brings his claws up in front of his face.

The small yellow steps forward, and his vision clears-  _Bumble-bot._

The noise he makes is beyond description- almost a hiss, almost a scream, but it is filled with  _anguish_ and  _fury_  and he throws himself forward, lungs burning with the effort, but he refuses to stop.

"You! You you you  _you you you you_! Bumble-bot did this!" He yells, grabbing awkwardly, limbs screaming feedback errors and delays, " _Bumble-bot did this!_ "

A leg. A leg into his abdomen and then more pain and he has moved, backwards, to the ground. The world is spinning, gravity isn't working and the world keeps  _moving_  without him and he rolls onto his side to retch, purging  _whatever_  is inside of him, all pinks and yellows and a sick  _black_  colour he doesn't trust. He gasps in air and sobs brokenly, clawing at the ground as he tries to push himself back to his feet, still stammering, " _Bumble-bot did this, Bumble-bot did this_ ," like a mantra, like the only lifeline he has left. He clings to it, screaming, desperate, refusing to lie down.

Bumble-bot falters, stepping backward. His servos are glowing, danger danger danger, but he holds them close, looking uncertain, "I didn't do this- Black Arachnia did this- I was  _there_ -"

" _Bumble-bot did this- Bumble-bot did this- Bumble-bot di-_ " He continues, wrecked, unable to stop, stumbling forward on tired legs, broken arm cradled against the bent and bruised plating of his first shot takes out his left leg at the shin, and the second hits him square in the face and shorts out his right optic with a bright flash of light that is quickly followed by mind numbing pain. He isn't sure if he's screaming or if he's also shorted his audials, but the leg crumples and he claws at the optic, uncertain what to do to make it  _stop_  and he barely restrains himself from ripping the thing  _out_ -

"Wa- Wasp- if you- are you-" Bumble-bot stumbles, distantly, quietly, and Waspinator realizes his audials  _are_  working. He must not be screaming. Too tired, perhaps? He pursues this line of thought for a moment before a spasm wracks through him stemming from the shattered optic and he chokes back a sob. "What happened to you?"

He pushes his body up, trembling, maybe because he is tired,  _so_  tired, or the electricity in his system, "Bumble-bot. Spider-bot. World happen to Waspinator," he hisses, hoping his voice sounds less shaky to Bumble-bot than it does to Waspinator.

Bumble-bot seems uncertain. Waspinator wants to crush him. He wants to feel his spark between his claws and he wants to  _crush_  it. No- no, he doesn't want that. He wants to shove Bumble-bot into a transwarp chamber with an insect and he wants to  _leave_  him there.

Wasp just wants to stop hurting. Wasp just wants to go home.

Waspinator is screaming again, digging his claws into the ground and Bumble-bot and Green-bot move back away from him. They are scared. They are scared of him.

Good.

" _World_  do this to Waspinator," he says again, looking up at Bumble-bot with the eye he did not shoot, "Waspinator do things to world. Waspinator will make world pay. Make Bumble-bot pay. Make  _everyone_  pay." 

His insides feel like fire but like freedom, too, and he finds the part of him that brought him here. the last time was different than the others- the others had felt like the world pushing him away, but this time had felt like somewhere else pulling him closer. This time had been different. It was in his spark, almost, deep, hot and if he only could find it- if he can think of somewhere different, somewhere he'd rather be- the sharp, yellow/green grass comes to mind, and-

His claws are pressed against soft earth, sharp yellow/green grass brushing against his armour/skin in the breeze. The world is quiet. He is quiet.

His arms stop trembling and collapse beneath him, functional optic blinking out gratefully.

The ground is cool against his skin. The grass feels soft. The world is quiet, and for now, so is Waspinator. He slips into recharge/sleep, finally, finally, finally.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so angry how Wasp's character arc never finished. Like, not only did Wasp deserve better /Bee/ deserved a real character development arc and he didn't get it imho. That slapdash "hey yeah im totally sorry" wasn't enough for me and It's not gonna be enough for me. Me writing waspie fanfiction was basically inevitable from the moment I saw predacons rising. I've spent most of my weekend outlining this and it's been awhiiiiile since I wrote a multichap so bear with me here. I'm a fan of brief chapters filled with existential rambling.


End file.
